


keep smiling through

by Polexia_Aphrodite



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Peggy isn't perfect, neither is Howard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:31:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2578382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polexia_Aphrodite/pseuds/Polexia_Aphrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy Carter, and the men she loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a WIP I've had lingering/languishing for a while, and I thought I'd finally just post the finished first half of it. This comes from challenging myself to write Peggy/Howard _during_ CA:TFA (not as easy as it sounds), and from wanting to explore a darker interpretation of Peggy. This is also me doing that horrible fic author thing where I post the first part to gauge if the second part is worth finishing. So. There's that. 
> 
> This does contain some Steve/Bucky undertones in the distant background, which isn't explored because this isn't their story, but if that's not your thing, consider yourself warned.

*

_[She](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KNlpgpnhaY)_  
 _May be the face I can’t forget_  
 _The trace of pleasure or regret_  
 _May be my treasure or the price I have to pay._  
 _She_  
 _May be the song that summer sings_  
 _May be the chill that autumn brings_  
 _May be a hundred different things_  
 _Within the measure of a day._

 

*

_**1940** _

He is her first, and she loves him. Or rather, she thinks later, she loves him as much as a twenty-year-old girl can. He is a blinding bright spot in her life – a sun or a star – and she spends a warm month bathed in his glow. 

He is unbearably handsome – all dark hair and ruddy cheeks – an excellent dancer and an inexpert lover. His lack of skill is balanced by the tragic enthusiasm of a man who knows that it is his destiny to die. 

It gives Peggy a thrill that he slips away from his barracks to spend the night in her bed, heavy between her legs, with his skin pinked by her kisses and gin on his breath. She ought to live for her country, to serve, but she lives for this, for _him_.

When they say goodbye, they are at their best: he in his blue wool uniform and she in her drab brown one, sweating a little in the early summer heat. To preserve her lipstick, he presses his mouth to her cheek. Peggy lets her eyes close, and lets him go.

He is barely gone from her a month before she learns that he has been shot out of the sky. Blown apart and burned up. It’s later still she learns that for a few brief weeks she had carried his child – no, not a child. Not exactly. Just a wisp of flesh – molecules and atoms – that had slipped away from her with no more than a sharp pain and a bit of blood. 

And then he had really been gone.

 

*

 

__  
**1943**  


She lets herself harden up, lets her skin grow thick. She throws herself into work, and, after a harrowing season in occupied France, picks up a new assignment in the New World. America suits her: as she is now and as she wants herself to be. She likes its wide-open spaces, its lively cities and honest, hospitable people. 

Peggy wonders at the mad science of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, but she is told that this – _this_ – will win the war. She has loved and lost, she has seen the bombs fall on London, she has seen suffering and death, and she believes in the end of the war above all things. She keeps her reservations to herself.

There are two men she loves, and they are the last.

 

*

 

__  
**1944**  


She has a hard time splitting them up in her mind, she realizes later, even though they are both so different and so is what she feels for each of them. 

They each excel where the other one falters. Howard is playful and flirtatious, while Steve is earnest and sincere. They are two halves of what she needs.

It’s a rainy night, the air full of hot flak, when she and Howard fly him into Austria. She watches Steve fall down, down, until the white mushroom cap of his parachute blooms and floats away. 

On the flight back to Italy, she thinks on the insinuation Steve had made before he’d jumped. Or, rather, the insinuation she’d thought he’d made in his own, rather awkward way. That vague notion about her and Howard. She tries not to feel a twinge of disappointment that he could be susceptible to petty jealousies. She wonders if she has forgotten that he is only a man.

Still, for a long hour in the air, she worries.

When they land, Howard takes her chilly, trembling hands in his. “He’ll make it through,” he says, “I oughta know.”

Peggy manages a smile. “I suppose so,” she says.

He walks her back to base, but instead of offering her his elbow he drapes his arm around her shoulders. He warms her through.

 

*

 

When Steve comes back, he is radiant with victory. The long, hopeless night before ebbs away as he looks at her, flushed and bright-eyed. He’s beautiful, though no more beautiful than the scrawny, determined boy he had been when she first saw him. But now he is whole, complete and fully realized, and she knows that she wants him.

After a while, the crowd around him falls away, except for Sergeant Barnes, who lingers by his side. Steve glances at Barnes like he might shatter into a million pieces, and his concern seems justified by Barnes’ shaky hands and clenched jaw. 

All Peggy can do is look up at him and wait – she doesn’t know what for. Then one of his big hands wraps around her smaller one, a quick squeeze, and then Steve has his arm around Barnes’ shoulders, leading him away.

 

*

 

Their job done, she and Howard fall back to the SSR’s London headquarters, buried underneath the city, while Steve and his team tear through Europe. 

She ought to feel at home, back in London, but she has seen too much, and so have her old friends. They are none of them the same, now. Men come in from the front in waves. A steady stream of ambulances brings them into London to fill the hospitals. Peggy’s nightmares are haunted by Steve – not as he was when she last saw him, but bloodied and bandaged, stitched up and broken.

Nights with Howard chase a little of the loneliness and fear away. He keeps a room in a posh hotel, and sometimes leads her there for a drink in the lobby’s stylish bar, miraculously left untouched and glittering despite the bombs. And when she needs it, when she indulges a bit too much, he loops an arm around her waist and leads her to his room, swaying a little and tracing her fingers along the walls for support. It’s unseemly. Damn unseemly. She knows it’s not at all the way she was raised. But, like the American who wrote the words, she contains multitudes. She is the woman who will turn up at headquarters in the morning with polished shoes and a straight back. And she is also the woman who will fall asleep in Howard Stark’s bed while he curls up on a sofa.

It feels good to be a little numb, though, sometimes – to dull the sharp ache inside her. She can tell that Howard uses drink in the same way. 

“I won’t tell them, you know,” he tells her one night, swiveling his body towards her on a high bar stool. His eyes are bright and his cheeks are flushed. 

Peggy sips at her glass of gin and tonic and raises an eyebrow. The glass hits the varnished bar with a _clink_. “Won’t tell them what?”

“What you’re like.”

She smirks. “What am I like?”

Howard looks at her squarely, plainly, with a terrifying and unfamiliar sincerity. “You’re everything.”

Peggy feels her jaw slacken. Something wet pricks at the backs of her eyes. She inhales deeply and draws herself up. Howard clears his throat and looks away, granting her a moment of privacy.

“You’re really awful about men, though,” he tells her then, with his usual teasing grin. “How long’re you gonna wait for Rogers to make his move?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She takes a long sip of her drink.

“Don’t you try to come over all prim with me, Carter,” Howard scolds. “I’ve seen the looks he gives you, and the way you moon over him. I give you the same damn looks all the damn time, and not a lick of good it does me.”

She flinches and tries to smile. She knows what he’s talking about – she’s noticed every one of Howard’s guarded, adoring glances, nestled in amongst his bluster and feigned depravity. The truth is that she doesn’t know what it means for her – those looks – and she hasn’t let herself think about it.

“My head is swimming.”

Howard nods. “Upstairs then.” He leaves a stack of cash on the bar and guides her away with a hand at the small of her back.

 

*

 

The summer air is warm and humid as Peggy winds her way through barracks buildings, jeeps and stray equipment. With the lights out and blackout curtains drawn, nights at the base outside London are stunningly dark. She’s learned to like seeing the stars, and searches out moments like this, when Phillips doesn’t require her presence, to find a quiet spot to enjoy the night.

Howard finds her once, leaning against an olive-painted jeep. He offers her a cigarette, which she declines with a wave of her hand. He tucks the pack back into his jacket without taking one for himself and slips his hands into his trouser pockets. In the dim light, with his body tilted against the car, with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, he looks striking. 

“How long’s it been since somebody kissed you properly?” he asks. The question sounds at once like an idle musing and a strategic attack.

Peggy knows the answer exactly. 

“Ages.”

“Come on, then.”

She considers it for a moment, then tilts her head back. 

Howard’s hands wrap around her arms; he steps forward and presses his mouth to hers. It’s chaste for a moment, before Peggy parts her lips, before Howard’s arms wrap around her and press her into his chest, before the world seems to suddenly fade and fall apart. 

The nearby scrape of footsteps on gravel sends them both scrambling into the jeep behind them. The back seat of the car smells dirty and utilitarian – like soldiers’ sweat, vinyl and rubber – but in a moment it’s filled with the scent of Howard’s cologne and aftershave. He slides across the seat towards Peggy, folds his arms around her again, and what ought to seem tawdry instead seems perfectly natural, and terribly _right_.

He kisses her again, filled with an infectious kind of resolve. Against her better judgment, Peggy feels herself melt against him; weakened and helpless in the face of everything she has fought so hard against. His mouth is hot and open against hers; his hands run across her hair and shoulders, her clothed breasts and hips. He is making a case for himself, and he is nothing but convincing. 

“Peg,” he pulls his mouth from hers and breathes against her cheek.

“Hm?” she hums, and she knows that it sounds blithe and callous.

“He’s gonna treat you like a goddamn queen,” Howard tells her roughly, “But you ever push him aside, and I’ll be right behind him.”

Peggy turns her head away, into a shadow to hide her face. There’s a familiar tightness in her chest. She never knows how to—

Howard huffs and reaches down to clutch at the hem of her skirt. Her own curiosity doesn’t let her stop him. She’s wondered what it would be like to feel his hands on her, to let herself give in.

He somehow folds himself onto the floor of the car, on his knees with his hands on her legs. It must be terribly uncomfortable, she thinks, and it’s the last coherent thing she thinks for a long while. Howard pushes her skirt up to her waist and unhooks her girdle from her stockings. A hot shudder of desire shakes through her; she flushes and squirms in her seat.

Howard pauses, and she turns to look down at him. His eyes flick up to her face and he smiles, pleased to have her attention. 

“Well?” she says, and wishes her voice didn’t sound quite so breathless.

He pulls aside the strip of pink rayon between her legs and replaces it with his mouth, hooking her knees over his shoulders. Peggy feels a jolt of electricity go through her. Her entire body jerks awake; her thighs tense, her back arches, one hand scrabbles at the back of the car’s seat, her other palm presses flat to the ceiling. 

She realizes then that all the sex she’s had in her life has been sweet, loving and full of gentle passion. This. This is different. Howard grips her backside, sliding his fingers inside her with a filthy twist. His tongue licks against her like he’s trying to prove a point. It’s intense and overwhelming; the air in the jeep suddenly feels close and hot. Peggy stifles a sob against the back of her hand. She feels her lipstick smear. With her free hand, she cards her fingers into his hair, tilts her hips up, and takes far too much pleasure in the throaty moan he gives her in return.

Howard is relentless, pushing her farther and farther until the tension finally breaks. She comes panting and whimpering, with her eyes squeezed shut; her fingers curl into fists – one gripping Howard’s hair, one slamming uselessly against the car door.

She feels a vague sense of loss when he moves away from her, and when she opens her eyes, Howard has shifted to sit next to her, wiping his chin with a monogrammed handkerchief. 

Peggy slides across the seat towards him, her hand reaching for his lap. She still has what’s left of her pride, and she won’t let a favor go unanswered.

Under her palm, he’s hard and huge, straining against the cotton twill of his trousers. Peggy feels the corner of her mouth quirk up. Howard has always had the bearing of a man with something sizable between his legs, and she’s pleased to learn that it isn’t just a bluff. 

But then Howard’s hand grips her wrist and pulls her away. 

“Didn’t do it for that, Peg,” he says, sounding breathless and ragged.

The hazy fog of lust in the car peels away. Peggy frowns. “But I want—”

Howard looks over at her sharply, and her mouth snaps shut. 

“It’s late,” he murmurs in the dark. He raises her wrist and presses his lips to the back of her hand. “Better get back to your bunk.”

With the quiet, mechanical click of the car door, he’s gone before she can ask him to stay. 

 

*

 

Peggy evens the score a few weeks later, in a darkened tent at a base outside of Rome. She doesn’t know why, but she feels herself insist on it. She tells herself that she wants to prove to them both that they’re the same, that he isn’t better than she is. She wants to believe that she understands him, because he’s only a man. 

She’s fast, ruthless and efficient, terrified that some lowly private should stumble across them and see her on her knees. She takes Howard apart with her mouth and hands, until he’s no more than a trembling, shaky wreck. Afterwards, he takes her face in his hands and kisses her, licks the taste of himself out of her mouth. In the shadowy night, she can see his eyes glisten in a way that makes her stomach clench.

“Thank you,” he murmurs against her temple, and for all her determination, she doesn’t know what to say to that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading - hope you all like it :)

She sees Steve again, and again and again, when he delivers reports or escapes to London for a few precious days of leave.

It isn’t what he looks like that draws her to him. Even after the serum makes him unreal and magnificent, it’s never _that_ that turns her head.

She has always seen his courage, and his determination. She has seen his heart. And it’s for that that she loves him. But for all his god-like strength and warm spirit, she can tell that she still baffles him, and she slowly starts to admit that she finds him just as confusing. Men like Howard come easily to her – she can handle _shocking_ and _abrasive_ , but she doesn’t know what to do with _gentle_ and _kind_. She wishes she did.

 

*

 

She lets Howard kiss her because Steve won’t, and because she isn’t sure yet how to force his hand. It happens more often than it should – hasty, clumsy trysts in darkened corners. Peggy doesn’t bother regretting it; the world moves too fast now to linger on how things ought to be.

The summer’s nearly gone when they find themselves back in London, back in Howard’s hotel (the usual place), with their bellies full of gin and bourbon (the usual way). Later, Peggy finds herself in Howard’s bed, but this time not alone. 

She lets herself drift for a long while, as Howard presses searing kisses into her skin, as his hands run across her clothed body too gently, too worshipfully. Peggy pushes off his jacket and pulls off his tie, letting both land unceremoniously on the floor. It’s the most alone they’ve ever been, the most privacy they’ve ever had, but Howard seems hesitant and distracted, letting things move between them at a slow, ponderous pace. 

“You’re a real piece of work, Peg,” he says, and there is pain and arousal in his voice. “Want to have your cake and eat it, too.”

Peggy feels a little chill build at the center of her chest. She isn’t sure if it’s because her indecisiveness has hurt him, or because she’s been caught. Howard fists both hands in the fabric of her skirt and tugs up. Her hands curl around his suspenders. His stomach is warm through his shirt.

“Maybe it’s that you want us both, huh? You know I’d do it – hell, _anything_ – but Rogers might take some convincing.” His mouth is at the side of her neck, below her ear, moving along her jawbone. “It’s not that I don’t think he could be _adventurous_ , but it’d be a cold day in hell before he’d share you.”

It’s unthinkable, what that would be like. She forces back a shudder.

“No,” she shakes her head against his shoulder, “it isn’t that. That isn’t what I want.”

He pulls back, looks her in the face, and waits. Peggy understands. Whatever happens next will be all her choice.

She tells herself that it doesn’t mean anything if she goes to bed with him – it doesn’t make her into the kind of woman who uses sex in exchange for status. She and Howard aren’t soldiers; they are only people. Whatever she does with him has no bearing on her position in the world.

The rest of their clothes – slacks and stockings, shirts that were crisply ironed that morning – are shed and tossed to the floor. It feels good to be careless. Around Steve, she is pulled taut, on edge, too much in love, but with Howard she lets herself loosen.

His skin is hot against hers. The press of flesh against flesh makes her feel unguarded and loopy. He pushes himself inside her, and Peggy feels the spark of something deep and primal flicker in her heart and between her legs.

“You’re really here, right?” Howard whispers against her neck, “With me?” His hips slow for a moment.

Peggy’s fingers wind into his hair. She hitches her hips and wraps her legs around his waist. 

She knows that Howard feels everything – greed, jealousy, love, desire – with a frightening, overwhelming ferocity. It makes him too proud and too insecure. Peggy has never felt particularly obliged to indulge the capricious anxieties of men, but now she feels herself falter. Howard is warm above her and hard inside her, breathing heavily, his hair damp and curled by sweat. He looks down at her with dark eyes, pleading not for her love, but for her presence, for partnership and complicity.

“Yes,” she tells him. The word seems insufficient, so she lifts her head to kiss him. He closes his eyes; she keeps hers open. “Don’t stop,” she says quietly when they part.

*

After, they lie together, side by side in the dark, quiet room. Through a gap in the blackout curtains, Peggy can see the world start to lighten.

“Roosevelt wants me in New Mexico by the end of the week,” he says, taking a long drag off the Lucky Strike pinched between his fingers.

Peggy’s brow furrows, offended by the idea of his sudden departure. “What for?”

He hedges for a moment. 

“Can’t say.”

He turns his face towards her; she can just barely make out his features in the gloom. There’s an obvious sadness in his eyes that makes her nervous.

“You and Steve—“ he starts and stops. Peggy stiffens; he’s been too jealous tonight and she’s wondered where it came from. Now she knows: he’s sure that she’ll run into Steve’s arms the moment he’s gone. He opens his mouth to speak, but she quiets him with a wave of her hand and pushes herself up and off the bed. 

In an hour, they’re back at headquarters, Peggy using the warmth of her palms to smooth out the wrinkles in her uniform.

 

*

 

**1945**

 

Howard comes back from the desert with a deep, brown tan and a gold band on the ring finger of his left hand. 

“Congratulations,” she tells him, when she finds him alone in his lab. She tries to keep the venom out of her voice. The look he gives her is filled with a gentle wariness that makes her want to smash the delicate instruments littering the laboratory’s tables.

“Nancy’s alright. Not a thought in her pretty little head. Not like you,” he tells her. He twists the ring on his finger. “And you’d have never had me.”

His melancholy only makes her bristle further.

“You don’t suppose you’ll be bored after a while? It’d be a very expensive divorce.”

Howard chuckles darkly. “Could be. But she doesn’t want my money. Her father’s in oil in California; they’ve already got plenty of it. All she wants is me, Peg.”

He turns in on himself then, his shoulders caving forward and his gaze dropping to the floor. Peggy, hit with a wave of indignation, feels her face flush.

“That’s not—“ she starts, “I’ve never wanted your money.”

Howard furrows his brow and shakes his head. “I know, I know,” he waves a hand, “But there’s Steve, and that’s all there is for you, right?”

He looks up at her then. His gaze is imploring, almost nervous. If she says yes, he’s made the right choice; he can go back to his pretty, thoughtless wife with a clear conscience. If she says no, if she gives him any reason to hope, then he’s made a catastrophic misstep.

Peggy knows the answer to his question. For all that she loves Steve, every molecule in her body sings out for Howard. There is a connective tissue between them that is powerful and mysterious and undeniable. But she still has a great deal of pride and an instinct for mercy, and she summons both up now.

She nods her head, Howard gives her a rueful smile, and Peggy feels a part of herself go missing.

 

*

 

She finds Steve in the ruined bar, tearfully kicking back shots of brown liquor, his thoughts wrapped up in Barnes. She tells him what she can – a little of what she’s learned about love and loss – and passes him her handkerchief to replace his, which has already gone grubby and damp. 

He pulls himself together, just enough. With Steve’s heavy, steadying hand at the small of her back, they trek together over grey rubble.

“Don’t go back,” she says when they reach the street. “Come home with me.”

Steve pauses, but only for a moment, and nods. They walk through the city in silence, with Peggy’s hand tucked in the crook of his elbow.

*

In the warmth of her apartment, she disappears into her washroom, shucking her skirt, blouse and underclothes, and pulling a pale pink peignoir over her head. It’s the kind of lacy, silky thing that rationing has eradicated, but she’s kept it for some unknown, girlish reason. Steve’s eyes go a little wider when he sees her in it, and a rush of satisfaction makes her head feel light. 

Steve offers to sleep on her sofa – a threadbare old thing that will hardly hold him – but Peggy takes his hand and pulls him into her bedroom. He doesn’t resist. He undresses quietly as she slides under the covers, folding his uniform and setting it on her bureau. Bustling around the room in his shorts and undershirt, he seems charmingly domestic.

He turns off the lights before he slides into bed next to her. Peggy thinks the darkness must give him some courage, because the next thing she feels after the dip of the mattress as he joins her is the press of his hands, heavy and warm and roving with a surprising freeness across her waist and hips. She slides towards him and he buries his face against the side of her neck.

He’s careful with her, and slow. A trail of kisses leads him across her shoulders, down her chest where the fabric of her nightgown dips low, into the hollow between her breasts and lower still.

“Want to marry you when this is all over,” he murmurs against her belly. His breath is warm; the feel of it makes her curl her toes into the mattress. “Gotta talk to your folks first.”

Peggy lets her expression go neutral. Her eyes slide shut; for a moment all she wants to feel is his hands spread wide on her hips and the heat of his body between her thighs.

“Suppose you will,” she says back. She doesn’t tell him that it’s impossible, that her father was killed in the Somme before she was born and her mother by an incendiary bomb in the autumn of 1940. There’s no sense ruining this, not when she doesn’t know when she’ll have it again. Not when this might as well be play-talk, pretending at a future that may never come to be.

She reaches to turn on her bedside lamp because she needs to see him as he strips off his shirt. When she reaches for his shorts, he shies away. He dodges her confused look, kissing her hard, and for a long time. And for a while Peggy can set aside his hesitation, letting him work her over with lips and tongue until her shoulders relax and her leg curls its way around his hips, pulling him against her until she can feel the hard ridge of his erection pressed against her hip. 

“Have you done this before?” she murmurs against his cheek, trying to sound sympathetic.

He leans back. There’s a tiny pinch at the corners of his mouth, a tremor of uncertainty in his eyes. Peggy feels a flicker of curiosity pulse through her. It would be too cruel now, to ask what that means. To wonder how Barnes really fit into his life.

“Have you…with a woman?” she offers magnanimously. The muscles under her hands relax ever so slightly. He shakes his head no.

“Do you want to?”

“Yes,” the word comes out in a rush of air, humid against the side of her face. “With you, I mean.”

Peggy squirms out from under him and reaches for the drawer of her bedside table. She hands him a square packet, quickly to hide the fact that her hands are trembling, and pulls her peignoir over her head as he kicks off his shorts and slides the rubber on.

She has always felt better without clothes – free and easy and immodestly proud of her body. Her prudish mother once told her about a libertine aunt who ran off with a French infantryman at the end of the Great War, and Peggy has always felt herself an heir to that familial legacy.

She presses her hands to Steve’s shoulders and pushes him flat on his back, straddling his hips. He brings a hand between her legs; she moans and rocks her hips at his first exploratory strokes and Steve smiles, leaning up to bring his mouth and free hand to her breasts. Her hips lower, his hand moves, and then he’s inside her, gasping her name and gripping her waist.

There’s something unsettling about it, though. Peggy had thought it would feel _perfect_ – to have Steve under her, inside her, flushed and warm and so terribly beautiful. And it _does_. It does. But there’s something. Else. Peggy can feel the open, raw, needy part of herself recognize the same thing inside him. 

This, she realizes, is what binds her to the two men who mean the most in her life – their ability to reflect the very best and worst. Like two mirrors facing towards each other, creating endless twin images. She and Howard are brilliant but self-destructive. She and Steve are devoted and passionate, but carry too much sadness and desperation. But she has never called what she felt for Howard _love_ , and that is all she has ever called her feelings for Steve.

She leans forward, leveraging herself with her hands planted on his chest. Below her, Steve groans; his hips hitch and rise up off the mattress, making her feel half-wild with how much she wants him. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t last long; there are still hours until morning.

 

*

 

*

**1946**

Howard finds her just one week after she arrives back in New York. She’s in her usual booth at the L&L when he slides into the seat across from her. For a moment, she’s so happy to see a familiar face, she could weep. Instead, she pulls her back up straight and purses her lips.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he says, but his voice sounds surprisingly lifeless. She’s read the papers; he’s spent the last month searching for the wreckage of the aircraft Steve crashed into the frozen north. “What brings you to the wrong side of the pond?”

She sighs. “”You know I’m still with the SSR.”

“I do.” He smiles.

“How is life with the missus?”

“It isn’t. I’m a free man again.” He gives her a lecherous grin.

Peggy rolls her eyes and pushes down a smile of her own. “Heaven help us.” 

Two matching cups of coffee appear, courtesy of the pretty automat waitress who has become one of the precious few people Peggy has spoken with outside of the SSR’s offices. 

“No luck yet?” she asks when they’re alone again. The coffee smells acrid and unpleasant. Her stomach turns.

Howard shakes his head and wrings his hands. “We’ll find him. He can’t just disappear.”

He reaches across the table quickly and pulls her hands away from her cup. His palms are cool and dry. He gives her fingers a quick squeeze, and for a moment he looks overcome. His jaw clenches, his face pales. He pulls his hands away, clearing his throat loudly, then stands and swings his jacket around his shoulders.

“You’re leaving?” Peggy asks, forcing herself not to ask him to stay.

“Only wanted to see that you’re still in one piece,” he shrugs the coat onto his shoulders and won’t meet her gaze.

She nods blankly.

“Don’t worry, Peg,” he tips his hat, “We’ll meet again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hang out with me on tumblr: [hardboiledmeggs](http://hardboiledmeggs.tumblr.com) and/or [Historical Agent Carter](http://historicalagentcarter.tumblr.com)


End file.
